When you meet a stranger, what are some clues that they probably read a lot?
My daughter has a new boyfriend. He’s a typical cowboy. Wears jeans and cowboy boots, no matter how hot it is. Jeans are tight, big rodeo belt buckle, pair of work gloves in his back pocket. Just a cowboy. We were hanging out Saturday night, talking, and he used the word “unkempt.” My eyebrows went up and my daughter and I made eye-contact and she grinned a little, as if to say “I told you he was smart!”
There were other things he said which told me he’s a reader which is pretty unusual in this day and age….well, in any day and age, actually.
We were discussing our pond. I said I wanted to put in a waterfall.
He said, “That would be a NEAT water feature.”
‘Water feature???!’ :) He also named off a bunch of trees, one in particular, that Rick and I had been debating about what kind of tree it was. Turns out it’s a sycamore. He said, “That’s not the kind of tree you normally see, growing wild out in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. Someone planted it, or the original. Was there a homestead around here?”
There was. The foundation of the house was on the other side of the pond.
I asked him what kind of seeds it had so I could plant more in select locations. He told me they start new trees via their roots, like an elm tree. I forget what the official term that he used was.
The only time he tripped up was when my daughter used the word “Haycorn.”
He said, “Haycorn?”
We yelled “WINNIE THE POOH!! IT’S WHAT PIGLET CALLS ACORNS!!”
He laughed, and said he was going to add that word to his vocabulary.
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I love it when I meet someone new and their vocabulary and knowledge is so rich and varied. he sounds like a keeper if the other parts check out.
A real life cowboy, I thought they only exist in films. Hope we get a picture soon. :-)
If their vocabulary is very limited and also their knowledge seems very limited I assume they don’t read much, or if they read it is fiction. However, if someone seems well versed on many topics and has a good vocabulary, I don’t assume anything. My husband and I both rarely read for pleasure, unless you are counting reading fluther and looking up specific questions and articles about interests. He has a masters is a VP at a good sized company, and a pretty good vocabulary, even taking into account English is his second language. My vocabulary is good, definitely not great, but pretty good, mostly because my family had higher educations and strong vocabularies, and I had some decent teachers and professors.
They say “yes” if you ask them if they read a lot.
@Headhurts He’s interesting enough but I was extremely disappointed to learn that he thinks the government is going to declare war on us. All I could do was put my head in my hands. I said, ‘If the government declares war on us there isn’t a damn thing we could do about it.”
He started to list all the things we could do, including stock piling weapons (except, he claimed, you can’t get ammo because the SRS is stockpiling all the ammo….wtf? That’s a new one! SRS is Social and Rehabilitative Services…welfare, food stamps, etc.)
I said, “Excuse me, can I borrow your Apache attack helicopters and your SAMs and a handful of other tactical ballistic missiles and your satellites and some drones? Oh, yeah. Drone surveillance shows there is this guy who has a basement full of assault rifles…oh. Wait. His house no longer exists. It was destroyed by a missile launched from 500 miles away.”
He said it will be a guerrilla war.
I said, “BTW Mr. President—to a man our entire military personnel seems to have gone AWOL. They gone. Kaput.”
He said, ‘Well, they won’t have the soldiers attacking their own home towns!” I manged to bit my tongue and change the subject at that point before things got heated.
Best stick with trees and water features.
Yup.
Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.
@Dutchess_III He isn’t scared if voicing his opinion then! I guess you will always know where you stand with him. Do the little ones like him?
Well, my daughter just met him a couple of weeks ago. One of her sons is 18 and lives in Washington state, the other is 14 and he’s only met him a couple of times.
I don’t think there are signs specific to a book reader. :)
@Mama_Cakes I’d be surprised to hear anyone use a word like “unkempt!”
Yeah, that takes me back.
In the first week of our freshman year of college my roommate and I were still getting acquainted and were at lunch one day talking about others in the cafeteria, not knowing any of them, either, of course.
I mentioned one guy who looked like he’d be worth following around at the mixers, because he was not only good-looking but also “carefully disheveled”. He loved that. It became a sort of inside joke between us for the rest of the year.
One of the best current ways to test someone’s (American) cultural literacy is, believe it or not, to watch The Simpsons with him or her. The writers of that show mix in all kinds of topical and classical literary, artistic and cinematic references that are a little more subtle than Homer’s and Bart’s typical pratfalls.
Then, of course, you could also ask, “What have you been reading lately?”
My daughter and I were country driving a couple of weeks ago. This one dirt road narrowed and narrowed until it ended at someone’s property, which was marked by an open gate. We didn’t go any further. Their drive gently went up a hill then curved out of sight into some trees. I told my daughter “It’s just wrong for people to make such alluring driveways!”
” He told me they start new trees via their roots, like an elm tree. I forget what the official term that he used was. ”
Possibly, rhizomes.
Their willingness and ability to listen.
Ask him how what and how many books he has on his bedside table and in his bathroom.
Water feature doesn’t come from reading a lot – that’s pure reality TV.
Unkempt, though… that’s nice. :)
My first thought was ‘vocabulary’, too. Not just a big one, but an interesting one. First thing that mentally attracted me to my husband was his use of the words “carrion” and “dead shit” in the same discussion, haha.
Someday I’ll have to tell you about the woman I was dating a few years back. She was extra-kempt.
Was he wearing glasses? A lot of people who wear glasses seem to read a lot.
When someone has a head full of trivial facts. They carry around little known details in history, culture, biography—this is one sign. It’s also a sign that this person may suffer insomnia. There are some people who, like myself, will read just about anything to get to sleep. Encyclopedias work well for me.
Mispronounced Vocabulary: Cacophony. Vignette. When seldom-used words like these are mispronounced, but properly used, it is usually because they have read them, but never heard them in conversation.
A person who carries a book wherever they go. Especially a paperback in the back pocket of their jeans. This is a also person who can patiently wait in a line. And as Realeyes said above, they are usually good listeners. They also tend to be introspective. They know how to enjoy quiet time and can entertain themselves—which is an invaluable trait in this cacophonous beehive we live in.
Readers more often than not are able to write well.
Addendum: The proper use of the word “ort,” however, is a sign of a crossword puzzler. But crossworders are usually avid readers.
@Espiritus_Corvus Mispronounced vocabulary is an interesting observation. I mispronounce a few words (epitome, compromise, ration, monastery, melancholy, etc.) because I’ve only read them and have never heard them pronounced.
I think what everyone else said is true.
I think if they use jargon from classic books, that’s a good indicator. I’ve known several people who do that, and they do it because they can’t think of a “modern” word at the time, and instead resort to using a word like “tomfoolery” (I use tomfoolery all the time).
If they make references or obscure quotes from books, subtly, that’s always a sign.
@Espiritus_Corvus “The proper use of the word “ort,” however, is a sign of a crossword puzzler.”
Ha! Also “ern” / “erne”.
@glacial Good one.
@Aesthetic_Mess: Quoting, of course, is a sign of a reader. I overheard a conversation in a marina café not long ago that went like this: “Back in Da Nang we had this fuggin’ guy, he was like some kind of Milo Minderbinder, a real Leo Getz type, you know, like ‘I’m Leo Getz, whatever you want, Leo Getz.”
This guy revealed himself to be not only a reader, but a contemporary film buff. And a good conversationalist.
Old Q about how people judge those who don’t read for pleasure, thought you might be interested.
@Dutchess_III It looks like you found a young man who is erudite and well read. And BTW, that root tree-planting method is called “rood propagation.”
@Espiritus_Corvus Is erudite one of them “crossword-solvin’” words?
@Yetanotheruser
That is a cutting method and rhizomes propagate without taking stock from the roots and planting elsewhere.
I think that is what was meant here.
I just realized I called it “rood propagation”. It should be ”root propagation”.
LOL! I saw what you did there!
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